


nothing to prove

by wintercreek



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-03
Updated: 2009-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-05 17:10:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercreek/pseuds/wintercreek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Boooooooooooones." Jim taps the door again. "What are you doing in there? Come out, it's time for dinner."</p><p>The door slides open and she's standing there, black dress clinging to her curves and falling just past her knees in a way Jim can only think of as swingy. She looks amazing. "Leona McCoy, what-"</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing to prove

**Author's Note:**

> The cause of this is threefold: 1. I (was at the time) packing to move across the country, and yesterday my packing involved pulling out all my dresses and sparkly tops, evaluating them, and packing them. 2. I have been reading some really awesome genderswapped Kirk/McCoy and now I have girl-Bones stuck in my brain. 3. My iPod decided that Billy Idol singing "Dancin' With Myself" was the best packing music it could provide, and I got an irresistible image of girl-Bones grooving in a little black dress.
> 
> Thanks to Kate for amazing, insightful and detailed beta work. This fic is immeasurably better because she went over it (and over it, and over it) with me. &lt;3

"Boooooooooooones." Jim taps the door again. "What are you doing in there? Come out, it's time for dinner."

The door slides open and she's standing there, black dress clinging to her curves and falling just past her knees in a way Jim can only think of as swingy. She looks amazing. "Leona McCoy, what-"

"Med Acad dinner, Jim, I _told_ you that I had a dinner tonight." She wrinkles her nose at him. "How did you forget that when I just told you _again_ this morning?"

"I don't know." Jim shrugs. "Can I go with you?" He can't stop looking at her in that dress - it's so different from the uniform slacks she always wears, a routine broken only by the days she's on rotation and comes home in scrubs, too tired to change. When Bones wears her scrubs, Jim sets dinner on the table quietly and tells her about his day in even tones. When Bones wears her uniform she pulls a couple beers out when she gets home and they shoot the shit, touching base at the end of a long day. Jim doesn't know _what_ to do when Bones wears a dress, though.

Bones rolls her eyes. "No, Jim, you can't." And she shuts the door in his face, the panel missing his nose by only centimeters. Jim hadn't even realized he'd stepped that far forward.

"What the hell," he mutters as he wanders to their kitchen to make himself something to eat. Actually, forget it. He'll call for pizza.

When the doorbell rings half an hour later, Jim jumps up to answer it. It's not the pizza guy.

"Uh," Jim manages.

The guy in the tux raises his eyebrows. "Is Dr. McCoy ready?"

Is she _ready_? Jim'll give this guy 'ready.' He's working himself up into the state that Bones calls 'bristly' when she appears. She did something elegant to her hair, twisting it up into a chignon rather than confining it to her usual utilitarian braid, and she smells great.

"Hi, Paul. I see you've met my roommate." She gestures to Jim; his eyes are caught by the bracelet on her slender wrist, and when she drops her hand his gaze follows it down and he notices that her legs are very nice, even in flats. Bones doesn't wear heels - he'd asked once why she didn't when she remarked on some girl's shoes, and Bones had subjected him to a medium-length lecture about the perils of shortening the Achilles tendon and the impossibility of running in stilettos during a crisis. If crosses Jim's mind to wonder if this Paul guy knows anything about Bones's shoes.

Paul's holding out a hand. "Paul Gilligan."

"Jim Kirk." They shake, perfectly civilized. "Well, uh, have a nice time." Jim stands in the door, awkward, after they leave. He feels like Bones's big brother, or dad maybe, seeing her off on a date - and that's wrong on so many levels, not least that she's older than him.

She's always felt like family, though. From the first moment he thought she was going to heave all over his shoes, Jim was at ease with her. He's never thought about it before, but it's occurring to him now that maybe she's not the sisterly kind of family.

He never has to put on a show for Bones like he does for the people he dates. Jim always makes it _look_ effortless, but being charming is hard work. So is planning the evenings, making sure everyone falls asleep happy, and getting out in the morning without making any binding promises. Jim has never been charming at Bones, not once, and she's never seemed to want it. They are drinking buddies; they are best friends who finish each other's sentences. Bones is the one person in Jim's life who's never asked for more than he can give.

The pizza comes, and Jim idly hacks the Med Acad social schedule while he eats. The dinner tonight is at a swank hotel, of course, a place with a ballroom and live music. Bones will want to dance. She's grabbed his arm and hauled him on to the dance floor at formal dinners and cadet parties for the last two years. She'll probably have a great time.

Maybe he'll head over and check on her, just in case.

He's out the door and in an autocab before he can think about it too much. It's not until he's on the street in front of the hotel that he realizes his jeans and t-shirt aren't going to cut it. The shirt's not even _his_. It's one Bones won in a raffle and passed on to him because the size was wrong, a purple number that says "[If you're interested in time travel, meet me last Thursday.](http://www.typetees.com/product/1476/If_you_re_interested_in_time_travel_meet_me_last_Thursday)" Jim heads around back and sneaks in through the delivery bay instead of trying the front door. It's easy to skulk through the busy kitchen and come out near the musicians.

The music is not the usual dignified string quartet that the Med Acad event planners favor. This one is a group of twenty-somethings wearing rather avant-garde versions of formal wear and playing old, loud songs. They sound twentieth century North American.

Jim ducks behind a truly massive potted palm and eyes the tables. There's Bones, laughing at something Paul's said and touching his arm. Jim experiences a wholly inexplicable urge to punch Paul. That's not right, though. If he's making Bones happy, good. She should be happy. Jim can't remember Bones ever saying she'd enjoyed herself on a date. Their first year at the academy she went out a bit but every attempt ended the same - Bones back in her dorm room, or sometimes in his, communing with her flask. If Jim ever meets her rat bastard ex-husband, he'll use every dirty fighting trick he knows to take the jerk down. He'd almost practiced his moves on the first two guys Bones dated, but she stopped him. "It's not their fault, Jim," she'd said. "Now sit down and stop looking for new ways to split your knuckles." He'd expected her to sound sad and maybe to want to talk about it. But Bones had just seemed tired and kind of remote, like she was at the bottom of a well.

Second year Bones didn't go on any dates, and Jim stopped bringing people home to his room in case Bones was there. She knew his key code and he told her every time he changed it; he couldn't imagine his quarters without her coming and going at will, and she needed a reliably quiet place to study. Record numbers of female cadets meant that even as a second-year Bones had to share a room. She'd be sharing one still, if they hadn't gotten permission to move out to an apartment together.

Jim had brought someone home to their apartment exactly once. It was the guy from Canada, the one who'd responded to Jim's flirtatious grin by charming Jim right back and then proceeded to drink him under the table. When Jim woke up the next morning, the guy was gone, thank goodness, but the hangover he'd left Jim with was very present. Bones had made him toast and tea and whacked him upside the head and told him that if he was going to be stupid he could at least do it out of her sight.

He's probably being stupid now, Jim thinks, so he better stay hidden. The band shifts from the slow song they've been loitering through and kicks into something with a driving beat. Bones stands up. Her eyes are sparkling and she's tugging on Paul's arm, asking him to dance, no doubt. Paul's not standing; he's shaking his head. If Jim weren't watching Bones he'd miss the half-second in which her face falls, but he _is_ watching her, and he sees it. Paul doesn't.

Bones squares her shoulders and walks out on to the dance floor alone. It's not the kind of song that needs a partner - the other people out there are mostly standing in loose clusters and gyrating to the beat. Jim's hoping that Bones joins a circle, like that one that has three people from her on-call shift in it, but she doesn't. She picks an empty spot and closes her eyes, hips moving rhythmically. Jim was right about her dress - it does swing nicely - and as she lifts her arms over her head Bones makes one long line of grace. He leans forward, wanting to see her better. Her feet shift as the rest of her sways; her bracelet catches the light and her hands close into loose fists. Bones looks sexy out there, all her curves evident in the stretch of her body. She looks vulnerable, too. Someone should be dancing with her.

Jim is standing just in front of the potted palm when he realizes what he's doing. He moves back to the shadows, slowly, and decides he'd better go home before he embarrasses Bones. Jim doesn't call a cab this time - he takes the long walk home on foot, thinking about Bones alone in the twinkling light. Dancing with herself. Jim would have danced with her. He would have swung his hips in time with hers and then, when the next slow song came on, he would have put his hands on her waist and pulled her in close. And when she put her arms around his neck he would have breathed in the scent of her, that perfume she was wearing tonight mixed with the underlying scent of pure Leona McCoy. And then maybe-

Hang on. He stops dead, focusing in on this. Jim's thinking that he would have kissed her, _kissed Bones._ When did _this_ become _that_? When he saw her in that dress?

A hovercar comes to a stop beside him and the window hisses down. "Hey, do you need any help?" the driver asks.

Jim blinks at him, startled. He's been standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at the side of a building like an idiot. "Uh, no. I'm okay. Just thinking."

The driver waves and says, "Okay, then." Silently the car glides off, and Jim shakes his head and resolves to get home before having any more uncomfortable revelations.

Once he gets there, Jim sinks into the squashiest arm chair in their living room. It's Bones's favorite; he loves when she does her reading in it, curled up small with a PADD and a stylus. Bones never seems small when you're talking to her - all that personality gives her a forceful presence - and Jim loves that about her, but he also loves how petite she can be in repose. He loves Bones, apparently, and when the hell did that happen?

Jim's eating his leftover pizza, cold and still good, when the door opens and Bones comes in. Jim frowns; there were no voices outside their door before she came through. "Did you have a good time?" he asks, fishing for an explanation.

Bones jumps. "What are you doing lurking in the dark? You're a Starfleet cadet, not a gargoyle. And - is that pizza?" She strides over and commandeers a slice, perching on the arm of the chair. "Oh, _pizza_." Her eyes flutter closed as she savors a bite and swallows.

Jim swallows too, but not for the same reason. "I was waiting up for you." He looks away from her, picks the chair cushion, and then meets her eyes again. "How was it?"

"Eh. The food was okay, the music was good." She smiles at him. "Waiting up for me, huh? That's a new one."

"So's you dating."

Bones looks suspicious. "James Kirk, what's going on?"

"You ever think about being more than friends?" He drops his gaze to her feet with their ridiculous sparkly toenail polish, then looks hopefully back up at her.

She makes a puzzled face. "With you?"

He hits her arm, lightly. "Yeah, with me." Jim furrows his brow, looking for the words and resisting the urge to stick his tongue out at her. "I mean, we do everything else together. I like you better than any of those people I take out."

"Jim," she starts, soft and gentle the way she gets when he has a terrible idea, like free-climbing El Capitan in Yosemite. "That's exactly why we shouldn't. I don't want to be one of those people you 'take out.' I've _seen_ how it happens: you take them out, you take them home, you never talk to them again." She snorts. "Unless they turn out to be your astro-navigation partner, right?"

Jim sighs, remembering. That had been a real world lesson in actions and consequences. "Unless that, yeah. But I don't want to take you out. Not like that. It wouldn't be like that."

"What _would_ it be like?"

"It would be like this." He gestures at their living room, open hands taking in the cold pizza, the warmth where their shoulders are pressed together, the pile of their shoes by the front door. "Bones, I snuck into your dinner tonight. He didn't dance with you." Jim is surprised how upset he sounds, how upset he _is_ about this. "Somebody should always dance with you."

Bones stands up and looks down at him. "I don't need somebody to dance with me, Jim. I can dance all by myself, and that's fine. I'm glad I did that."

Jim tilts his head and looks a question at her.

"I'm glad I got up and danced. I got sick of waiting for my life to start again. It's like these past two years I've just been sitting here, watching everyone else and just - just _waiting_." Her eyes are far away. "Everyone says it takes time, after you get divorced, so I waited. I didn't know what I was waiting _for_."

"Maybe-"

"No, I don't mean I was waiting for you." Bones crinkles her eyes, taking the sting out of her statement. "I wasn't waiting for any person. It was more - I was waiting for that time to end. For that empty feeling to go away."

Jim remembers Bones their first year, her distant dark eyes, the way he'd come home one night and found her curled up in his bed. When he'd asked her what was going on, she'd squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, "It's been a year, and it wasn't even good at the end. Why do I still miss it? Why do I still miss him?" Jim had slipped in behind her, nothing but comfort on his mind, and wrapped his arms around her. He remembers their second year, spending the second anniversary of Bones's divorce slouched on his bed watching ridiculous old vids and drinking beer. Bones had borrowed a pair of his pajama pants, plaid ones that rode low on her hips and didn't quite fall off. She'd gotten the zipper on her fleece jacket wedged and he'd spent ten minutes insisting he could fix it before she popped it free.

Looking at her now, Jim wants those moments again, more, over and over, but without the pain behind them. He wants Bones leaning on his shoulder laughing until she cries, stealing his old sweats and pressing up against him in sleep. He wants to buy her a new fleece, one with a zipper that works, and he wants her to wear her old black one at home anyway so he can watch her careful surgeon's fingers fiddle with it.

"I'm glad you're done waiting," Jim says, and means it. He doesn't know what this means for them, this change in Bones, and he has a sinking feeling that the things he wants may not be part of what's coming. But he wants her to be happy and whole, and she is.

Bones examines his face, considering. It's impossible to say if she's been remembering the same scenes he has, but for one breathless moment he thinks maybe she was. And then he knows that whatever she's been thinking, it's similar enough; she says, "I'm glad I found you, Jim Kirk."

"Bones." Whatever else he might have started to say is lost as she leans in and kisses him, soft and sweet, just the tip of her tongue caressing his lips under hers.

When she pulls back, she looks around their living room. "Maybe I wasn't waiting after all."

"What?"

"It's here. My life. I just didn't know it."

Jim grins. "That's okay. I didn't know either."

Bones's laugh is bright and full; it reminds Jim of sunshine. "What a pair we make."

Jim stands up next to her and takes her hand. "Want to dance?"

"Sure." She puts her arms around his neck - she smells just as good as he'd imagined - and they sway there in the living room, small circles amidst the furniture. His hands are light on the small of her back and the press of their hips together is more intimate than the kiss they'd shared. Bones will never dance alone again, he vows, unless she wants to.

After a time, she steps back and drops her arms. He watches the sway of her hips as she walks away. Jim wonders for a moment what this means, and then he realizes she's gone into his bedroom and not hers. He laughs and hurries to follow her.

Bones is shimmying out of her dress when he gets to the door. Jim lifts his eyebrows and widens his eyes exaggeratedly, and she chuckles and takes his pajama pants from the foot of the bed. He pulls off his t-shirt and hands it over to her, then steps out of his jeans. It's a good thing Jim doesn't mind sleeping in just his briefs, because it's quickly becoming obvious that his pajamas belong to Bones now.

They make out in bed, tongues gliding over each other and hands touching faces, necks, arms. It's sweet and innocent, for Jim, but it means so much more. They fall asleep like that, Bones in his arms, both of them clothed. Their life together is just beginning; their life together had already begun before they even knew it. It won't always be easy, but they know that. It will be them, comfortable and broken-in already.


End file.
